[senco-forum] levelling writing + questions

Dear All

After reading this thread - and doing a bit of research on the internet - I
do like those lovely little pyramids to put on your table to help with
writing.

Now this is just the sort of thing one of my writing groups need - but in a
very simplified form.

I have one writing group - the bottom one of the class - that I do a writing
activity - the same as the rest of the class but I write the help materials
for them.

They are a group still insecure about using those 122 first words - and they
want to write either far more complex sentences than they have words to use
or at the other end of the scale - are not too sure that they can write
anything at all.

Our aim is 5 sentences in  half an hour - after a fair old chat about all
the things we might do from the pictures/story we start off with.

So far we have been required to do to character studies and to retell a
story.

Now - what I want to know - does anyone have a nice word template - or any
other ICT one - that I could make them something helpful for our writing.  I
like the fact that they stand up rather than being flat - and that they are
four sided for the things we are already thinking about.

However, the ones I have seen on the internet are far too complex for my
students needs.  For example - the only punctuation we are trying to get to
grips with are full stops followed by  capital letters.

We are already thinking about sentence starters because I won't let them use
the same word twice.

And every so often someone writes a sentence that uses a connective - and I
give out "posi points" like confetti for people who try to improve on what
they did last week - or any positive action that improves their writing.

What I am after is a template that I can produce weekly for out writing -
that won't drown them in print - but I could produce 7 sentence starters for
example - and that ambitious vocabulary would be targeted on the specific
subject - and because I only do this with 5 children I could produce
individual ones.

I have found an "early" list of sentence starter words - but can't find the
same for connectives - if anyone has a suggested list for this sort of
student I would be very pleased to receive it.

I can offer a list of sentence starters for 13+ students for a variety of
types of writing.

I must say that it shows when I think that I last taught 5 year olds in
1966! (when I was paid to do it - and things have changed) - and I have
forgotten lots too - so any help from all you experts out there would be
gratefully received.

And it is a real pleasure to be teaching "little ones" again - and only 5 of
them - brilliant!

Regards 

Ruth - who will also mention that her "wonderful - new (bought December26th
2006) - very expensive computer's operating system failed - and I had to get
rid of everything and reload it.

This time I did not lose everything - back up hard drive mostly worked - but
it did not save my address book - or my list of favourite web sites - so I
have no-ones addresses - please send them again!!!!!!!  It also lost the
quiz - all of it - that I was working on when it died!  I might add that I
also had on my machine Acronis - Norton recover and Norton go back - NONE OF
WHICH WORKED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And what is the exact address for the forum - the one with bounces - or the
one without! 

And where is add to address book in the new version of Office - using
Outlook for emails - I used to be able to just add someone to my address
book with one click - and after lots of clicks - I have still not found it
and I presume that it must be there somewhere!